from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Cloaking devices have been a part of science fiction and fantasy for ages, but so far, no one has really developed an invisibility cloak that works "like magic" without using some tricks that limit the effect to novelty illusions. Researchers are working on the problem, and there have been a few significant advances that are definitely getting better. Check out these videos to see how advanced physics is creating things that aren't quite indistinguishable from magic (yet).

from the also,-craziness dept

Nearly a year ago, we wrote about the disappointing news that Raymond Teller, better known as "Teller" from Penn & Teller (also as the silent guy in that act), was suing another magician for copyright infringement for copying one of his tricks. This was disappointing on multiple levels. As we had discussed years ago, magicians are an example of a market that has been hugely innovative over the years, mostly without copyright being used at all. In fact, it's not entirely clear that a magic trick can be covered by copyright -- even if Teller successfully "registered" this particular trick. Copyright registration is basically a rubber stamping procedure, rather than any serious review.

The lawsuit has continued, but not without some challenges -- one of the large ones being that the magician being sued, Gerard Dogge (aka Gerard Bakardy), has tried to pull a disappearing act to avoid getting served. And, it appears, he's been somewhat successful.

Defendant’s citizenship and current whereabouts are unknown, and have not been known
since the commencement of the action. On April 30, 2012, plaintiff hired a private investigator to locate defendant
in Belgium and serve defendant with the summons and complaint. Additionally,
plaintiff retained a top Belgian law firm to properly effectuate service upon defendant. To date, defendant has evaded personal service and cannot be located in Belgium, Spain, or
in any other country in Europe.

Nice trick. Except... it didn't work. The court notes that Dogge is clearly "intimately knowledgeable of the details of this lawsuit," in part because he sued Teller in Belgium for defamation over the lawsuit. Oh yeah, even while trying to avoid getting served, Dogge has filed his own filings in the existing lawsuit, which is generally not a good way to suggest you don't know that the lawsuit is happening. Also not helping Dogge's case is that he appears to be... a bit wacky, based on his filings. For example, filed an undescribed bit of porn -- and then asked for it to be filed under seal. The court rejects this request, and also tells him: "Defendant shall not file any pornographic material with this court as a sealed exhibit or otherwise."

Oh, and then he asked for a jury made up entirely of magicians.

In general, it sounds like Dogge's "legal" arguments are somewhat close to nonsensical as well:

For example, defendant states “[m]agicians are like clowns, they only
serve to entertain. Obviously stealing from each other is out of the question, and this has not
happened here.”

The court does reject one of Teller's motions, seeking to effectively bar the Belgian case from moving forward, even while saying that the lawsuit "has a vexatious flavor," but that's not enough to block it.

In the end, it's unfortunate that Dogge appears not to be handling the case particularly adeptly. There are some important copyright principles at stake here, and he seems to be treating it like a joke. I can understand why someone would choose not to respect copyright laws like that, but it means that a good chance to actually explore the legal issues is likely to be wasted or (worse) create a bad legal precedent.

from the empower-your-earning-ability-with-this-One-Simple-Spell! dept

eBay's Fall Seller Update has just arrived, bringing with it several tables, FAQs, a bullet-pointed "Best Practices," and sadly, to the purveyors of certain goods, a list of categories that will no longer be welcome within the confines of Paypal Fraud Central eBay's listings.

Several "metaphysical" categories are being dropped as of August 30th, and sellers will have to remove listings for "spells, curses, hexing, conjuring, magic, prayers, blessing services, magic potions, [and] healing sessions." Sadly, eBay says that "transactions in these categories often result in issues between the buyer and seller that are difficult to resolve," resulting in the discontinuation.

The full list of dropped categories also includes the following items:

work from home businesses & information; wholesale lists, and drop shop lists

It's not often that someone (inadvertently) makes the clear statement that, yes, work-at-home "information" is about as useful as a Haunted Magical Male Dog Familiar.

I have no doubt that any issues arising between the sellers of these "goods" and the purchasers would be "difficult to resolve." I can only imagine the response team asking questions such as "Did you feel you weren't getting scammed quickly enough?" or "Do you feel that the three day period was inadequate to test proper bonding with the dog spirit contained in the aquarium decor rock you picked up at a highly inflated price?" This means that these sellers will most likely have to relocate* to the welcoming confines of Human Trafficking, LLC Craigslist, where buyers and sellers will be able to better match up vendors with victims, thanks to region-specific listings.

*Or, you know, just stay there.

While this news is likely disheartening to your average small businesswiccan and clickfraudster, it's probably for the best. The mantra around various suburbs, rural co-ops and unincorporated townships has always been "Put your money back into the community. Think Globally. Shop locally!" With these "alternative" businesses being shunted back to Craigslist (it's almost as if they never left!), citizens will be able to turn to their friends and neighbors for their next Incubus Succubus DJINN Summoning Spell or Doctor Job, Employment Website Sale. And that's the way things should be. Local merchants preying on local victims, all the while "thinking globally" about which offshore location would make a decent retirement spot.

Of course, as with any shakeup, there's bound to be a few victims. Due to eBay's culling of the categories, we may never know if this Haunted Doll Has Spirit Of An 18 YR Old Jogger Found Strangled To Death will ever find a happy home in which to "scream out loud and break things out of anger." But, if you act quickly, you could be the lucky person to give this possessed and needy doll "alot of attention," in order to prevent her from "screaming at night banging on the walls and knocking things over."

Perhaps picking up a cushy Doctor Job would give you the additional at-home time needed to give this doll your undivided attention, as well as allow you to get used to its "tendency to stare at people where it gets to the point of being very uncomfortable." Perhaps Haunted Doll could pitch in and babysit, giving you a much-needed night away from all the screaming, breaking and staring. After all, she is "good with kids and pets."

from the ownership-society dept

I've been a big fan of Penn & Teller since I was a kid, so I'm pretty disappointed to learn that Teller (the silent one, whose name, it turns out, is Raymond Teller) is suing another magician for copyright infringement for (a) doing a similar trick that may have been based on a Teller trick and (b) offering to sell "the secret" to that trick for around $3,000. There was a YouTube video of this other magician, Gerard Dogge, who goes by the stage name Gerard Bakardy, showing the trick, which Teller had removed with a DMCA takedown notice. Dogge (who is Dutch, but apparently performs in the Canary Islands at a hotel) and Teller then had a phone conversation, where Teller offered money to Dogge to stop performing the trick and to promise not to reveal the secret -- but they disagreed over price.

This is disappointing in a number of different ways. Years ago, we wrote about an academic paper that looked at how the magic community policed itself without having to resort to the blunt instrument of intellectual property lawsuits. As Tim Lee noted at the time:

Instead, the magic community uses social norms to reward those who discover new magic tricks and punishes those who disclose them to non-magicians. Because magicians rely so much on their professional network of other magicians to learn about new tricks, new equipment, and new performance opportunities, maintaining a good reputation within the magic community is essential to the career of a successful magician. A magician who uses another magician's trick without giving the originator proper credit, or who reveals secrets to non-magicians, is shunned by other magicians. That kind of ostracism can be a much better (not to mention cheaper) way of disciplining wayward members than getting the lawyers involved.

Unfortunately, it looks like Teller has decided to go much further than that. While it is true that he registered a copyright on the trick, illustrated with the following amusing illustration, it's pretty ridiculous for a magician to claim "ownership" of a trick:

I recognize that magicians fear losing "the secret" to their tricks, but that's pretty silly. Magic is entertainment, and people like going to see it not because they're "fooled" but because of the showmanship of the entertainers. And, Penn & Teller's monstrous success has much more to do with the fact that their acts are incredibly entertaining -- rather than the skill of their tricks. Even if someone knew the secrets to all of their tricks, it wouldn't make the show any less enjoyable.

Furthermore, it's not even clear that there's actually infringement here. While certain specifics about the performance may be copyrightable, the basics of just doing a trick shouldn't be subject to copyright. It's much more narrow. If anything this seems like yet another attempt to abuse copyright law to stifle some form of "competition," rather than for any legitimate copyright-related purpose. It's just disappointing that someone like Teller would do such a thing.

from the nothing-up-my-sleeve dept

A few years back, we wrote about how the magic industry was an example of a creative industry that thrived without intellectual property protection. As we noted at the time:

The magic community uses social norms to reward those who discover new magic tricks and punishes those who disclose them to non-magicians. Because magicians rely so much on their professional network of other magicians to learn about new tricks, new equipment, and new performance opportunities, maintaining a good reputation within the magic community is essential to the career of a successful magician. A magician who uses another magician's trick without giving the originator proper credit, or who reveals secrets to non-magicians, is shunned by other magicians. That kind of ostracism can be a much better (not to mention cheaper) way of disciplining wayward members than getting the lawyers involved.

But in this age where the maximalists of the world seem to think that everything creative must involve copyright, apparently that's changing. A recent legal dispute in the Netherlands has ended with a magician having to pay $16,725 to another magician for doing the same trick. The magician argued that there was no "secret" in the trick and that lots of other magicians did the same thing, but the court said it was infringing.

from the trust-but-verify dept

Ben Adida has a great post discussing the misplaced faith people often have in the machines in their lives, and the way that faith often spills over to e-voting. He mentions a scene in the 2006 HBO documentary on e-voting where an election official breaks down in tears when someone shows her how her voting machines could be hacked. For computer programmers, who are intimately familiar with what goes on under the hood, the idea that we should automatically trust anything a machine tells us is a little bit ridiculous. We're aware that computers are extremely complex devices that can go wrong in any number of ways, that they're designed by fallible human beings, and that it requires a lot of very careful engineering to make sure they're secure and reliable. We recognize, in particular, that the more complex a system is, the more likely it is to have problems, and so the more skeptical we should be of its results. It's not a coincidence that $5 pocket calculators tend to work flawlessly, while complex systems like Excel and the Pentium chip sometimes make basic arithmetic errors: the greater complexity increases the number of ways things can go wrong.

But a lot of non-technical folks seem to view things the other way around. Last week, for example, I noted a a Chicago law professor who thinks that "the future is surely with the touch-screen or some other form of online voting." The problem with this statement is that if our goal is security and reliability, which it should be, the added complexity of computers and touchscreens is a big disadvantage. But this isn't obvious if you've never looked under the hood to appreciate all the things that could go wrong. Computers are not magical boxes that always produce the correct answer, but unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think that they are.

from the plenty-of-innovation dept

The paper we linked to on Tuesday about innovation in the magic industry has generated a lot of attention around the blogosphere. Magician Andrew Mayne thinks we've got it all wrong. He tells us that "creative people are constantly pulled from magic to places where intellectual property is better recognized," and that the magic industry would be more innovative if it were more like the music industry. Interestingly, after faulting the paper for lacking any economic research or input from magic creators, Mayne himself failed to offer any examples of individuals who have left the magic industry because of an inability to make a living. Nor does he cite any other magicians who share his view. Magic legend Jim Steinmeyer apparently thinks the current system would break down if the magic industry were as large as the music industry, but he doesn't dispute that it works pretty well at its present size.

Meanwhile, my friend Jacob Grier, who has worked as a freelance magician for several years, hails the paper for its thorough research and disagrees with Mayne's critique. As an example, he quotes a high profile dispute between prop makers over charges that one has been copying the other's designs. While the more established craftsman was annoyed that his designs were being copied without credit, he didn't feel the dispute was hurting his business much: "I think that the feud/competition has actually increased my business by a rather large margin. And the competition has certainly been a catalyst for me to improve my products." That echoes a point we've made repeatedly here on Techdirt: that a competitive marketplace leads to more innovation because it forces producers to constantly improve their products and stay ahead of the competition. That's true in the software industry, and it's just as true when you're talking about magic. Perhaps that's why, as Jacob puts it, "If anything, it's much more common to hear magicians complain about the tremendous glut of new products on the market rather than of a dearth of innovation."

from the must-be-magic dept

Lately, there's been a growing body of research on industries like fashion and restaurants that thrive without the aid of patent or copyright protections. In these industries, the lack of legal barriers allows innovative ideas to spread rapidly within the industry, while informal social mechanisms like reputation ensure that innovators get proper credit for their creativity. Ed Felten points out a paper by Yale law student Jacob Loshin that explains how the magic industry has thrived without resorting to legal protections for new inventions. Instead, the magic community uses social norms to reward those who discover new magic tricks and punishes those who disclose them to non-magicians. Because magicians rely so much on their professional network of other magicians to learn about new tricks, new equipment, and new performance opportunities, maintaining a good reputation within the magic community is essential to the career of a successful magician. A magician who uses another magician's trick without giving the originator proper credit, or who reveals secrets to non-magicians, is shunned by other magicians. That kind of ostracism can be a much better (not to mention cheaper) way of disciplining wayward members than getting the lawyers involved. While it's absolutely true that the specific circumstances surrounding the magic industry don't necessarily apply to other industries, between this, the fashion industry and the restaurant industry, we're seeing time and time again that innovation can thrive and mechanisms (whether social norms or business models) are quickly presented to reward the innovators -- even if those innovations can (and often are) quickly copied.